Shock: HuffPo finally admits the existence of global cooling

Scientists believe they have discovered a near-unprecedented phenomenon – rarer, more elusive and mysterious than even the God Particle: an article in The Huffington Post on the subject of the environment and climate change which doesn’t once mention ‘man-made global warming.”

This extraordinary event was observed in an April 17th HuffPo article entitled ‘The Great Lakes Are Still Almost Half Frozen, And It Could Affect The Environment For Years’. The article notes that ice coverage on the lakes remains unseasonally thick – the second highest ice-cover for the time of year since recording began in 1973. It also dutifully mentions, as all HuffPo pieces must, that there have been disastrous environmental consequences, in this case “unprecedented duck deaths” and “disruptions to the fish ecosystem.”

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However, what the piece doesn’t do – and this is what is puzzling scientists around the world – is try to blame the phenomenon on carbon dioxide emissions, global warming, or man’s selfishness, greed and refusal to amend his lifestyle.

“We’re mystified, seriously. A HuffPo article on the environment which doesn’t try to guilt-trip us into giving up meat and hot showers and bombing our economy back to the dark ages in order to combat man-made global warming. How can this possibly be?” asked Professor Otto Spengler of the University of East Anglia’s Department of Environmentalist Bullshit Studies.

“Of course, everyone half-way sane in the world now recognises that Anthropogenic Global Warming theory is a busted flush and that global mean temperatures haven’t risen since 1997,” continued Prof Spengler. “But the thing you have to realise about HuffPo – and Slate and Salon and the Guardian and the New York Times – is that the whole global warming scare was never really about science at all. It was about religious belief.”

“That’s why, for example, a few years ago you had that wonderful article by George Monbiot in the Guardian claiming that even the unseasonally cold, snowy winter that year was yet another sign of global warming.”

“But the truth is much simpler than that,” explained Prof Spengler. “Writing off these guys as simply nuts is cruel and demeaning. I prefer to think of these people as special – and in need of our gentle sympathy, much as we might apply to those Cargo Cult Pacific islanders who worship Prince Philip as their god. These people have dedicated their whole lives and spent many, many years worshipping their own environmental gods – variously known as Gaia, ManBearPig, and the IPCC – and it is proving deeply traumatic for them to have their dearest article of faith ripped away from them by harsh reality. Man-made global warming just isn’t happening for them in the way they wanted it too and they’re feeling a bit lost and bereft. It’s like being suddenly told by the Rev Jones: “No more Kool-Aid for you!” Or like climbing the top of the mountain to be assumed to heaven by the great spaceship, only to realise that the spaceship just isn’t coming.”

Professor Spengler and his team have been working through the night to try to analyse the phenomenon and have come up with two competing theories.

1. It’s a terrible accident. “Huff Po has a very strict rule which states that all environmental problems are the fault of mankind, that the planet is warming catastrophically and that only by funneling more money into the pockets of Al Gore and anyone, like those nice people at Solyndra, who donated to the Obama re-election campaign can it be preserved for future generations. Perhaps the author of the piece simply forgot this rule. The penalty will be severe: exile to one of HuffPo’s Siberian yoghurt-weaving collectives, at least, if not actual death.”

2. There has been an incredible, tectonic shift in HuffPo’s understanding of the world. It is now swinging round to the more scientifically plausible viewpoint that climate is driven by solar activity and that this late season freeze on the Great Lakes is yet another sign that we may be entering a prolonged period of global cooling.

“But we think the first explanation is more likely,” added Prof Spengler.

“The HuffPo – like the Guardian and the BBC – doesn’t really do science because the readers find it upsetting. They much prefer environmentalist propaganda about how it’s all man’s fault and we should sack the bankers now. Remember those Pacific Island Cargo Cultists: HuffPo readers really are pretty basic in their understanding of the world.”